THE POLITICS OF EXISTENTIALISM

Man is condemned to be free; because once thrown into the world, he is responsible for everything he does. — Jean-Paul Sartre

How come is it, whenever the issue of collective responsibility comes up, people of every political and philosophical bent suddenly turn existentialist?

I do not frequently agree with Ellen Goodman (OK, this may in fact be the first time I’ve ever agreed with her) but after reading this column in yesterday’s St. Paul Pioneer Press, I think we finally see eye to eye about something. An excerpt:

Generally, I regard personal responsibility as a national strength. It reinforces the idea that we have the power to shape and reshape our own lives as well as our bodies. But lately when my gaze rises from the scale on the bathroom floor to the scale of society, I wonder when taking personal responsibility means letting go of collective responsibility.

A few weeks ago I wrote a column asking why there wasn’t more political pressure for child care in a country full of stressed-out working families. Was it because mothers, like those in a focus group I watched, shared the P.R. mantra: “Nobody asked us to have these children.” Was it a belief that kids are private property to be groomed only by their owners?

Well, many, many readers wrote from the P.R. party. The party line was best expressed by Amanda, who wrote via AOL that: “If you decide to have a child, it is your responsibility to shoulder all the costs and responsibilities. Period. Why should I have to pay for someone else’s luxury?” She was not the only one to describe children as a luxury. One reader from Salem, Ore., compared kids to her pets: “It’s my choice to get them and I can’t expect the taxpayer to pay for their needs.”

Nobody said that parents should be their own kids’ physics teachers, police officers or pediatricians, but they basically said you shouldn’t have kids unless you already had every expense up to and through college in some mutual fund.

If you want to call Goodman’s comments more “it takes a village” idiocy, by all means, go ahead. But I think there’s a deeper issue at work here. Since it’s philosophical and I’ve got a great big piece of paper on the wall proving that I’m an entry-level philosopher, I’ll have at it.

I’m all in favor of people being generally accountable for their actions and, if you read the first paragraph of the excerpt, so is Ellen Goodman. Her commitment to personal responsibility is probably a lot squishier than mine, but it’s there nevertheless.

Children do not ask to be born into this world, nor do they ask to whom they wish to be born. If kids had some say in the matter, Bill and Melinda Gates would have half the world’s children and The Wiggles would collectively have the other half. We can all certainly understand the resentment some feel at having to support the children of the willfully indigent–those who could work, but simply don’t, preferring to collect government largesse. (Or, as one 80s song put it, to “live on the love of the common people.”) We’ve all heard horror stories about welfare parents who keep having children because it’s easier than finding a job and going to work.

But what we don’t hear (and what I couldn’t find any statistics for) is just how many of these people there really are. Does this circumstance describe 80% of all welfare recipients? 50%? 15%? 2%? Nobody seems to be keeping track. We do know that, overall, there are many fewer people receiving welfare now than there were even ten years ago–56% fewer families and 59% fewer overall recipents when 1993 and 2000 are compared, according to this site, which had the most recent stats I could find. So, while we many not have an exact number of how many people have chosen welfare parenting as a career, it seems reasonable to assume that, with that sort of overall decline in welfare recipients, whatever the number is now, it’s less than it was ten years ago.

But I digress. The point Goodman is making is three-fold: (1) many working families are struggling both financially, and in terms of their ability to be functional, (2) increasing government-funded child care would probably help them on both counts, and (3) a lot of people, parents or not, resent the bejabbers out of anybody who suggests (2).

It is my opinion, however, that it is wrong to punish a child simply because his or her parents are idiots. Or irresponsible. Or ungrateful. Or [insert undesirable personal characteristic here]. Again, they didn’t ask to be born into such circumstances, and if society expects them to rise above their humble beginnings to become better-functioning people than their parents, society had dang well better be willing to provide those kids with the things their parents cannot. This does not apply to adults, who are capable of deciding for themselves if self-improvement is worth the sacrifice it always requires, but for kids, you need to make an exception.

However, what I’m most struck by in the whole Goodman/reader exchange is the very nihilistic tone so struck by those who wrote in. There’s more than a hint of Kant’s categorical imperative in their responses. There’s also the underlying assumption that bringing a child into the world is of questionable morality, particularly if one is not of upper-middle-class means. It’s more than a little disheartening to hear children referred to as a “luxury”–they certainly are not a necessity to any individual, but it seems obvious that children are a necessity to anybody who thinks that they might grow old someday. In other words, while it’s possible to live a perfectly fulfilling life without being a parent, you certainly can’t say that the world would be better off if everyone chose to feel that way.

Like it or not, we all need children to be born into our society, if for no other purpose than to pronounce us dead and dig our graves. And, since we all need kids, we’re all collectively responsible for them, at least to some limited extent. You can’t pull the “I didn’t get the roll in the hay, so why should I pay for it?” argument. If that means you wind up subsidizing daycare for ungrateful, unambitious, irresponsible parents, so be it. I’ll grant that I don’t know that all their kids will turn out to be great, responsible members of society–are you willing to grant that you don’t know that they won’t?

(Submitted for today’s BELTWAY TRAFFIC JAM.)